Under the leadership of its young and dynamic chief executive JC Kuo, the Evergreen Group has risen from a small wood based business started by Mr Kuo's father over 30 years ago to an internationally operating ready-to-assemble (RTA) furniture, and panel, manufacturer with production facilities in Malaysia, Thailand and now Indonesia.

Right beside the wide and majestic Mahakam river sits the extensive veneer based products factory of Sumalindo Lestari Jaya (SLJ). Founded in 1980 as a natural forest concession holder and plywood manufacturer in Samarinda on Borneo, PT Sumalindo Lestari Jaya (SLJ) is still producing up to 15,000m³/month of plywood at its Loa Janan factory on the edge of this capital city of Kalimantan Timur province (p50). The company also diversified into MDF in 1994, building a factory up-river from Samarinda (see p44), while more recently it has also gone into the production of laminated veneer lumber (LVL) at Loa Janan. All that manufacturing capacity requires a secure and sustainable wood resource and SLJ has expended considerable effort on that front in recent years.

Right beside the Mahakam river sits the extensive veneer based products factory of Sumalindo Lestari Jaya (SLJ). That river provides the factory's lifeline as logs are floated from its concessions in Kalimantan right into the factory premises. The current factory at Loa Janan dates from 1982 when it had four production lines. In 1984, two 'jumbo' lines were added and in 1990 the company added a two-daylight Raute press for the application of paper overlay, phenolic film facing and decorative v-grooved panels. There are three main product lines manufactured here.

On my last visit to Indonesia at the end of 2005, it was not practicable for me to visit Sumatera Prima Fibreboard's (SPF) MDF line, but WBPI carried my interview with marketing manager Mr Tee TK in Jakarta about the company and the national issues with which it, and all panel lines there, have to deal (issue 1, 2006, p48). In December 2006 I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to visit that MDF mill and to talk to SPF's operations director John Hendarso about the 'birth' of the line - the company's first in panel manufacturing - in 2003 and about the company's plans for future expansion.

My journey to visit a mill I have long wanted to see began with a two-hour flight from Jakarta on Java island to Balikpapan on the east coast of the island of Borneo, in the Indonesian province of Kalimantan. Then came a two-and-a-half hour drive north to Samarinda, arriving at midnight. I was glad to put off the rest of the journey to the mill in Tanjung Harapan until the morning and to check into an hotel in Samarinda, a quite large town supported principally by coal and oil.